Black Friday is a goldmine for eBay resellers. On one single day there are more profitable items for sale than during the entire rest of the year. If executed properly, Black Friday can easily create thousands of dollars in profit. This article explains in detail how to find and buy deals on Black Friday and then how to sell them on eBay for a profit.
Preparing for Black Friday
In order to make the best purchases on Black Friday, it is necessary to start by gathering some supplies. Initially you will need the following:
- Money
- Transportation
- Advertisements
The first requirement is fairly self-explanatory, but keep in mind that the more money you can spend the more you can make. Don't go out and spend $10,000 on your first trip though, as that is a lot to loose if you mess up. Prepare yourself to spend a set amount of money before leaving, that way you will know exactly what you are getting into. The second requirement is actually more important than it sounds. My friend and I went on our first Black Friday trip over four years ago, and boy were we under prepared. We went out with two sedans and came back with two sedans filled with products plus another sedan's worth tied to the roof. I highly recommend that you at least attempt to find a rather large vehicle, though it isn't imperative. Lastly, you will need to find yourself as many advertisements for Black Friday as possible. The sooner you get these, the easier it will be to do the research. I personally advocate searching online; there are many websites that post Black Friday sales ads well before they are printed. Look for deal sites and eBay selling sites to have these. Now that you have everything together, let's get to the important part.
Researching Products for Profitability
It is ironic that the most important part of making money on Black Friday isn't actually done on Black Friday. This is the part that separates those who will profit from shopping and those who will just buy things. It almost all comes down to the research. When the big day rolls around, it is important to know exactly where you are going and exactly what you are buying Also know how much money you expect to make from each product. Keep the importance of this step in mind as we continue.
The initial research begins with finding the material, a.k.a. advertisements. This can be done in two ways; the first is to go and get newspapers on the Wednesday before Black Friday, the second is to find ad-scans on the internet. I fully prefer the second method, as it allows me to research weeks in advance. A simple Google search for Black Friday will reveal many websites that are dedicated to providing ads as far ahead of time as possible.
Once your ad collection is assembled, you will need to sit down and look through all of them, paying specific attention to items you think will sell best. If you need to get a general idea of product value then vist www.selladeal.com/products and look at what items sell best. Next you want to write down a list of the products that you think will be profitable when sold. You will then check this list against the completed auctions on eBay to get an approximate selling value. To reiterate, you will be looking through ads to pick out valuable buys and comparing the price with their current value on eBay. This will give you a guess as to the amount of money you can make off of each item. I recommend repeating this process of finding an item and checking its eBay price several times so that your list will be fairly complete. At the end of this process, you should have a good number of products along with an idea of how much money you can make from reselling them.
Ranking and Scheduling Stores
Now it is time to plan out our shopping trip. Here we have this list of products and how valuable they are to us. The next step is to arrange the items by store and by profitability. This should make it apparent which stores are going to be more profitable than others - these are the stores that you'll want to visit first. After you have the stores arranged based on profitability, you want to double check the hours of each sale. This will assure that you catch all opportunities because of differently timed sales (in a perfect world, each sale would start about 2 hours after the previous, in reality they will likely all start at the same time). The final step to this process is to write down an exact order of the stores that you will visit and an exact order of the products you will buy in each store. This list makes buying the best products a very straight forward trip. If you know what you want before hand, you will get there before the people who will have to think about it.
The Big Day - Black Friday
Believe it or not, this isn't nearly as difficult as it is made out to be. Yes, there will be crowds. Yes, people will be acting like maniacs. This is why you will succeed - because you have already planned and researched everything and will not be acting crazy. The drill is simple: follow your schedule and buy as many of the profitable items as you can get. There may be times when you need to be assertive to stay at the front of a line, or even to push your way through a crowd to get to a product. The key is to remain polite, confident, and assertive enough to get to where you are going. Getting angry or causing trouble will only make things worse. If you cannot get one of your best products, it isn't the end of the world. Remember that there are a lot of other items that you can get to resell for a profit. Here is a general set of guidelines for getting the best items:
- Always remain calm. You must be in control and thinking at all times.
- Be assertive. Say excuse me to get past people, don't just wait there.
- Be polite. The moment you loose your temper, the sales reps will turn on you.
- Stick to the plan. Purchase the items that you can, and move on to the next store.
If all of these guidelines are kept in mind, there should not be any problems during Black Friday. There is one other thing to be aware of; up selling. Sales personnel will try rigorously to add on warranties, surge strips, antivirus software, and many other items that are not worth mentioning. Do not buy into their sales hype - stick with the plan and purchase the profitable items, nothing else.
Selling your Products on eBay
Almost there! Here is what's next: cataloguing and selling the items online. This is pretty easy; the hard part is certainly over. Sell as many of the items as possible within the next two or three weeks, that way they will arrive by Christmas. Don't panic or overload eBay in order to reach this deadline, the items will sell nearly as well the first week into January. I don't recommend selling products during the weeks before and after Christmas, as this is usually a pretty slow sales period on eBay. I would highly recommend reading these selling guides if you need to brush up on your eBay auction technique. On the most basic level, you need to at least include a picture in each auction. That is about it - once everything is listed you need only sit back and deal with shipping. There are also some shipping guides in the above link if need be.
Let the Items Sell, and Count the Profits
This is the best part. Once everything is finished selling, it's time to add it all up and see just how great Black Friday is. I personally made well over $2,000 on my first Black Friday. Give it a chance, do the research, and good luck!
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